Light In The Darkness

When you turn out of Leasowe station, north of the level crossing, you pass between two large industrial concerns.  To your right is BristolMyersSquibb, the multinational pharmaceutical company, where employees are working on medicines to cure and alleviate any number of ailments.

To your left, is Premier Foods, which, as large lettering on the front of the building clearly informs you, is the Home of the Mini Roll.  

I will leave it to the reader to decide which business is providing the more valuable service to society.  All I will say is that I have never needed an anti-diabetes medicine, but I have eaten a Cadbury's Mini Roll with a raspberry jam filling, so as far as I'm concerned the Moreton Bakery wins.  They don't make Typhoo tea here any more, by the way, despite what that building says: various corporate takeovers and buyouts over the years led to Typhoo closing the factory in 2023.  They went bust shortly after, so there's karma for you.  

Reeds Lane continues for a while as a mix of open space and odd buildings.  The Birket, a small river that empties into the Wallasey Docks, runs through here, and combined with the proximity to the top of the peninsula it means that the land round here is often marshy or prone to flooding.  It'll seem like you're in a perfectly ordinary housing estate and then there's a patch of scrubland, unloved and unattended, though in the 21st century they're getting fewer and fewer as Wirral tries to build as many homes as possible.  I'm very much of the opinion that if people have lived in this part of the world for a thousand years but haven't seen to build their home on that bit of land there's probably a very good reason for it but then I'm not willing to put up with a small amount of annual flooding in exchange for a three bed semi with its own parking space.

I passed a shopping corner, the Tesco Express (est. 2022) unable to compete with the glittering sign of the Leasowe Local Store over the road, a store that promised "tobacco-drinks-vapes-groceries", and I think it's very telling that "groceries" is fourth in that list.  Beside it was a pharmacy without a branded sign, merely promising that it would "provide NHS services"; it used to be a Well, but given how pharmacy services in this country are constantly chopping and changing, it could be a Boots by the time you read this.  I'm not even sure what company provides my drugs any more, I just go in and see what tabard the girl behind the counter is being made to wear this week.

Leasowe is a good, stout, old-fashioned council estate, and I absolutely mean that as a compliment.  It was laid out by Wallasey Council starting in the 20s and 30s and it still carries the air of aspiration and hope.  The roads are wide and straight, the houses large, with gardens at the front and back and enough room on the side return for a garage or a porch.  There are grass verges, and greens.  I crossed one diagonally, a wide square of grass with children's play equipment at its centre.  It must be great to open your front door and let your kid go on the swings while you watch from a distance.

Of course, since this is 2026, most of the houses have been bought and sold many times.  (Bloody Thatcher).  Each home had its own distinct fencing, its own front wall, its own front door, as the new people sought to make their mark and make it a bit less... council.  Now and then there were homes that looked like they must've done when they were built - unencumbered by a double glazed front entry, the garden a stretch of grass that hasn't been paved over, a lack of any boundary barrier at all.  Everyone else was trying hard to be different, mainly by covering up the grass with tarmac and parking a couple of cars on it, though one house had a plastic lawn with a Mickey Mouse ears motif made out of white stones laid into it, so the imagination can take you anywhere.

St Chad's was opened in 1954, as a combination church hall and place for prayer, but it was quickly decided that this was undignified and money was raised for a proper church alongside it.  It opened in 1967, reeking of Swinging Britain, all concrete and stained glass.  It's lovely.

It's not ostentatious or over the top but it's just that bit special enough to be interesting.  I particularly like the bell tower.

St Chad's sits alongside a long avenue that forms the spine of the estate, at the point where Castleway North becomes Castleway South.  Again, it's a piece of elegant town planning, a central route lined with trees.  It's a community area, which is something we've lost from new housing estates these days.  Homes are rammed up against one another without room to breathe.

I continued along Twickenham Drive, past tight blocks of flats, three stories high with a central stairwell.  The entrance was enclosed with a glass front door for security these days but I liked their symmetry and their politeness.  They added bulk and density without being ugly.  There was a leisure centre here, too, as the residents of Leasowe were gifted with all the community facilities they could need.  (This sort of thing used to be a bone of contention for my mum when I was growing up less well-off on a private estate, while the council estate next door got multiple bus routes, a swimming pool, a market and a shopping precinct.  They also used to regularly have riots and sex workers on the streets and dead drug addicts being found in bin stores but she was still annoyed that their library was so much bigger than ours just because they were local authority).  

A noticeboard promised Unity in Our Community with flyers for energy saving advice and the name of the local housing association.  A faded poster pushed the Leasowe Fun Day, back on the 21st August (Bouncy castles and assault courses, face painting with the Hive, entrance through the Addy) and behind it was the Millennium Centre, a building whose name was modern for exactly one year and now seems hopelessly dated.  The Millennium Centre houses the library and council services and a Family Centre, one of those places for parents to get an hour's supervised contact with their children once a week to prove they're definitely not going to belt them any more.  Behind it were some newer houses, built on top of a different, long-demolished Council building; that had once been home to the Wirral Incontinence Laundry Service, so I imagine it must've smelt lovely round here when they had the machines on the go.

I followed the road round, past a house with a flagpole in its garden flying both the Union Jack and the England flag.  One good thing about living on Merseyside is we've been largely exempt from the flag-shagging madness which has gripped the nation over the past year.  Liverpool is, after all, "Scouse, not English", a city whose football supporters boo the national anthem at Wembley.  Nationalism gets a very short shrift round here, and its roundabouts and lampposts have been largely unadorned - the closest to home I've seen them is in Ellesmere Port, over the border in Cheshire.  If you want to go for that sort of nonsense you have to put up your own flagpole in your own garden and even then I've seen way more flags flying to commemorate Liverpool's 20th league victory than a tribute to His Majesty.

There was a small parade of shops here, including a Sayers, the Merseyside bakery that was thoroughly tramped underfoot by the mighty Greggs.  (For the record, I much prefer a Sayers sausage roll, though I admit there's a certain amount of nostalgia involved in that).  Opposite, Heron Foods occupied what used to be the estate pub, the Oyster Catcher.  

While the pub closed in 2016, it still lives on in a mural on the side wall, showing that nostalgia comes round quicker and quicker these days.  Also there, somewhat incongruously, is a hovercraft.  Scousers have long enjoyed trips to North Wales, spending holidays in Rhyl, Prestatyn and Talacre, but the Dee Estuary means that while it's an extremely short distance as the crow flies, you have to basically travel via Chester to get there.

The invention of the hovercraft suddenly opened up a new option.  In 1962, a summer service from Leasowe to Rhyl opened, skipping across the water in a straight line and cutting travel time hugely.  It's a brilliant idea, and hovercrafts will never not be exciting; I myself used the one from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight a few years ago and it was like being in an episode of Thunderbirds.  The wide beaches at Leasowe and Rhyl made them ideal spots to launch the service from.

Unfortunately, it was perhaps a little too soon to launch a hovercraft route.  The technology was still new and so there were technical problems - the sand would get in the engines, putting the craft out of service, and if the weather was bad it couldn't run at all.  The Irish Sea is famously short of millpond-like conditions, meaning it was an unreliable route to the seaside, so the passenger numbers weren't there on the days it did run - which turned out to be only 19 out of the scheduled 59.  It would've been lovely if it had succeeded.  To this day, it takes an hour to get from Leasowe to Rhyl by road, and even longer by train.  Perhaps Rhyl wouldn't be quite as sad as it is today if the hovercraft was turning up on a regular basis.

I disappeared back into the streets of the estate, past more open green spaces and builders laying down paving slabs over grassy lawns.  An electricity substation was accompanied by an abandoned fridge freezer and a shopping trolley; you don't really see shopping trollies outside of the supermarket car park these days, so it was somehow a delightful throwback.

I paused outside a block of flats and took a picture of the number of the block.  The address is housed in a light box, with the numbers on the outside, and I find them very charming.  I walked on, taking in the folding chairs around the front door, and the swing set in the garden.  How nice, I thought.  What a lovely little community.

Then I heard a strong, violent hammering.  It caught my attention and I saw a man behind the window of one of the flats.  He was pointing right at me and shouting.  There's a certain kind of noise Scousers make when they're really annoyed, when all you can understand is vowels and s's, and he was in full flow.  "uuuus AAAAY eeeee aaaarrrss DICKHEAD".  I understood that last bit.

I put my head down and hurried on.

A few seconds later I heard the noise again, the mass of vowels and the scream, and I realised that this time it was outdoors.  That he'd come outside and was in the street and hurling abuse at me.  I assume this man didn't like having his block of flats photographed for some reason.  He was taking it very personally.

I could've turned round and walked back to him.  Said, "hey, I'm just an architecture fan, and I liked your home.  If you're not happy having it photographed I'm fine with deleting it, that's no problem.  Have a great day!"  I did not do this.  I kept my head down and carried on walking and didn't look back.  In my pocket, my hand curled protectively round my phone.  The third volley of indecipherable fury sounded like it was closer to me, and I was ready to hear running footsteps, and prepped myself to use my iPhone as a club if I had to.  It would've been pathetic and I would've got my teeth kicked in and the phone would've been robbed but hey, you've got to have a plan.

He didn't chase after me any further.  I made it to the Leasowe Road, a long dual carriageway that shadows the coast, and I dashed across to try and put some traffic between me and him.  Only then did I pause and look back and make sure nobody was behind me.  

I've gone to some very dodgy places over the years for this blog.  Nationally infamous spots, both at home and abroad.  But I think this was the first time I genuinely thought I was about to get lamped.  I took a moment to swallow my heart and try and get it back into my chest then started walking again.

The Leasowe Road is a very long, very straight, very boring four-lane road that runs from Wallasey Village towards Moreton.  The most exciting thing about it is that you can get up a fair old head of steam on it if you're a man with a small penis.  There was one on the road that day, in a black car with tinted windows, who put his foot down and roared down the road as though it were Le Mans, the engine making a noise it almost certainly wasn't supposed to the whole time.  I was, needless to say, incredibly impressed.

Further along I encountered a man digging around in the bushes.  He was holding a gardening cane with a coat hook strapped to the end and pushing it at random into the greenery.  I couldn't work out what was going on.  Had he lost a gerbil down there and was hoping to trap it?  

Past the golf course - this part of the Wirral is 20% bunker - I encountered the entrance to the Leasowe Castle Hotel.  I have fond memories of this place, because one of my best friends was married here about twenty years ago, and I got astonishingly drunk and danced until my shirt was wet with sweat; there was also a buffet, and a buffet is the best food, and makes everything better.

Unfortunately the hotel closed suddenly last year, without warning, leaving staff unpaid and the building to rot.  This seems to be the 2020s way to close businesses; every other week there's a report of a bar or a restaurant where the waitresses have turned up on Monday morning and found the windows  boarded up.  Like everything in the UK today the hospitality industry is on a knife edge and it's entirely down to fate which side you'll fall on.

I took a wander up the drive for a look and it was sad and derelict.  Little memories of the hot day of the wedding came rushing back, the photos in the garden, the laughs in the bar, the picture I took of my friend Jennie smoking a fag where she looks ridiculously cool.  It's not really a castle, just a manor house with ideas above its station, that has been occupied and abandoned over and over for five hundred years, extended then demolished, useful then a drain.  It's currently on a downward slope but will no doubt swing back up again one day.

There was a sanatorium and hospital on the front here for decades, until medical science developed to the extent where a cure for tuberculosis was something better than "some sea air?"  Flats fill the spot now, looking over the marshes and grasses of the North Wirral Country Park, a spot of open land between the road and the sea defences here which mean you can walk from New Brighton to West Kirby without ever leaving the coast.  There are still concrete anti-landing craft defences on the shore.

I was heading for Leasowe Lighthouse, which is technically in Moreton, but I felt I had to visit to finish the area off.  You can see it looming up at you as you walk along the road, the end point you're aiming for, a white column of brick rising up over the flat marshlands.

There was, for centuries, only one way to reach the port of Liverpool from the Irish Sea, and that was to follow the coast of the Wirral between often hidden sandbanks.  As the port expanded, the chance of shipwreck expanded too, and so a system of lighthouses was built along the shore to warn off vessels.  The one at Hoylake is now a private home; the one a little further downstream was washed away in a storm and replaced by one on Bidston Hill.  The one at Leasowe was constructed in 1763 and originally had a brazier on the roof.  

Leasowe lighthouse was the first in the world to receive a parabolic reflector behind the light, put there by the Liverpool dockmaster, William Hutchinson.  He'd been experimenting with using mirrors to increase the visibility and he installed them here in 1772; suddenly the light was visible from 20 miles away, instead of five.  

It is, undeniably, an incredibly important building, locally, nationally, and internationally; it helped change maritime navigation and helped turn Liverpool into the world's most important port.  It's 2026, though, and nobody has any money for anything, so as a result it is cared for by dedicated volunteers, and only open a few times a year - the next one is on the 18th February, if you're in the area and have strong calf muscles that can carry you up to the top.  Alternatively they host abseiling days, if you really want to hurl yourself off a monument; you do you.

I took a seat at the base and had a drink of water.  When I'd last visited Leasowe I'd whizzed through, basing my entire visit around a very poor gag about Danger Lane.  This revisit really showed me what I'd missed back in those days when the station sign was the important part and the rest was irrelevant.  I'd experienced history, culture, and a little threat of physical violence.  Not bad for a Friday morning.

2. Leasowe

 

Opened: 5th May 1894 (there was a halt here for a couple of years in the 1870s called Leasowe Crossing but that was closed)

Line electrified: 13th March 1938

Number of platforms: Two

Points of interest: Leasowe was rebuilt ahead of electrification and given elegant Art Deco stylings in concrete.  This means two waiting rooms with flat roofs jutting out over the platform, plus a footbridge connecting them which has a muscly charm.

The footbridge doesn't get much use because there's a level crossing at the end of the platforms, so it's quicker to cross on the flat - assuming the gates are open.  If the gates are closed, please do not try to drive through them, as a man attempted in a stolen car a couple of months ago; this only works for James Bond.

Attractive Local Feature (ALF) sign: Two Eurasian Oystercatchers, stood in water, to plug the Wirral Coastal Park.  It's technically called the North Wirral Coastal Park but there's only so much you can fit on a sign.

Original blog post: 11th August 2007

What's changed since then?  Not much.  The usual electronic updates - next train indicators, Tap & Go pads.  I have a vague feeling that the waiting rooms weren't open back in 2007, but I can't say that with any certainty.  They're certainly accessible now. 

Proof of visit: 

The sad thing is, I was listening to the GoldenEye soundtrack in that bottom picture, and there is a very high chance that I was listening to the GoldenEye soundtrack in 2007 as well.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Seascape With Figures

I love flexitime; what a great idea. Work hard and we'll give you a day off. Well, work, anyway; you don't have to work too hard, just be there for a long time.

Where am I going with this? Ah, yes. A flexi-day. And what better way to use my time than to get out there and get tarting.

After last time's sort of aimless meandering, I decided to get a bit of purpose to my next trip. This time, I'll wipe out an entire branch of one of the lines. There were a few dinky little branches that seemed suitable, but I plumped for the West Kirby branch of the Wirral line in the end. It was a nice sunny day, and referring to my A-Z, I reckoned I'd be able to hop on and hop off the train and walk between stations.

From the usual start of Birkenhead Park, I was off to Leasowe, and the first level crossing of my tarting. I have a strange, completely irrational dislike of level crossings, and I wish I could explain to you why; I suspect there's a part of me that thinks they just couldn't be bothered building a bridge, and I resent their laziness. Certainly if I was a local it would drive me up the wall having the barriers close every fifteen minutes.

Leasowe station itself was a bit run down, fabricated out of concrete in a style I was rapidly going to become familiar with. Two little waiting shelters, a booking office, and - yes - an ALF:

I snapped the usual exterior pic then wandered off in search of Moreton, the next stop. Little did I know that I was taking my life into my own hands. What seemed to be a nice 1930s housing estate, with a green and semi detached houses, was in fact a teeming cess pit of hazards and perils. How do I know this? Because the Council have signposted the fact:

Oh, the humanity! I poked my head down the road, but I didn't dare venture too far. Yes, it looked like a normal suburban street from where I stood, but no doubt halfway down there was a minefield, probably manned by man-eating lions. The residents of Danger Lane must be trained stuntpeople, who borrow cups of TNT from one another. With their hair on fire. And possibly on unicycles.

Certainly Danger Lane was the most interesting thing so far. Without wanting to be overly critical, Moreton was a mess. A strip of grim, unpleasant shops, most of which had windows covered with mesh even during the day. I was happy to take my picture and scurry down to the platform.

Moreton further blotted its copybook with its ALF.

Look familiar? Fair enough, it's advertising exactly the same feature, but still; there's more to the Wirral coast than a couple of birds. A little feature board on the platform told me that the Wirral Coastal Park featured Leasowe Lighthouse, one of the first brick lighthouses in the world, dating from the 18th Century; a worthy ALF, surely? Or how about Leasowe Castle, a hotel on the sands which has parts dating back to the 16th Century? My friends Mike and Kirsten were married there last year, so I've got plenty of pics of it, if Merseytravel want to get in touch. (Their replacement of Birkenhead Park's board after my criticism has got me feeling bolshie). Certainly anything would be better than those slightly evil looking birds. Orange eyes? Is that necessary?

A whizz along on another train, and I'm at Meols. This town was the bane of my life when I first moved to the Wirral. I could not remember how to pronounce it, ever. Go on, take a guess; you'll never get it. (The 'o' is silent - it rhymes with Shells). For some reason I could not get this pronunciation stuck in my head, and I would cycle through every possible variation before I got to it. This seems to be a Liverpool area habit, possibly to confuse Southerners like me who move here and to mark us out as strangers. I used to go out with someone from Gateacre, which is pronounced Gattaca; I didn't know this until I told a taxi driver to take me there. And the second K in Kirkby is silent, for no apparent reason.

Anyway: Meols. This is where the Wirral Peninsula starts getting a bit posh - it's certainly a step up from Moreton, anyway - and so I was fully expecting an ALF proclaiming some sort of piece of natural beauty. Nothing. I recovered from my disappointment though when I spotted this -

which isn't an ALF, but is an Attractive Local Feature, if you see what I mean. I was surprised to see any kind of gradient indicator, to be honest, as the land round here's pretty flat, as it ambles down towards the Irish Sea.

A further wander along the busy and only semi-attractive Birkenhead Road took me to Manor Road station. I almost missed it though. Unlike all the other stations, this one wasn't on a major thoroughfare, but was tucked away at the end of a street of Victorian villas. And when I say tucked away, I mean tucked away; the entrance to the station was down a narrow alleyway between the last house and the tracks. Hence the slightly constricted look on my face as I try to take a pic with the sign in it.

However, I had just missed the train, so I was left loitering on the platform like a slightly dodgy pervert or a trainspotter (the two things are, of course, linked. And yes, train station spotters are a COMPLETELY different thing. Ahem.) In an homage to my route today, I was listening to local boys The Coral and their Magic and Medicine album, which kept me interested, and I decided to knock off a long distance shot of the station itself - the Manor Road station sign is just noticeable in the background, for MerseyTart pedants:

You can see the house style for this branch of the line in that shot. Apparently, according to Wikipedia (and if it's on the internet it's true; I am that gullible), the stations were refurbished in 1938 when through services to Liverpool started, and you can see that Agatha Christie, clean look in the finishes. It's just a shame that beside getting the silver and yellow corporate paint job, none of the stations seem to have been maintained to much of an extent.

And a trip to Hoylake showed exactly why. This station was tarted up last year when the Open Golf Championships were held at the Royal Liverpool course down the road, and it is a stunningly beautiful station.

Ignore the dodgy businesses in the shop units, and take in that deco sweep, and the London Underground, Charles Holden-esque drum over the ticket office. The ticket office itself is a lovely rotunda:

Yes, there's one of those annoying level crossings at the end of the station, and quite unbelievably, there's not a single ALF on the platform, but that couldn't dispel my pleasure at finding such a gem of a station. Which is why I look so chuffed in the MerseyTart pic, and why I am even more convinced that when I become an eccentric billionaire, I will spend all my money restoring train stations.

It was a shame to leave it, but I had to get to West Kirby (note the lack of a second K!). The houses here were enormous, astonishingly expensive Victorian and Edwardian mansions, built for rich Liverpool merchants and bankers. The contrast with Leasowe's somewhat rundown Danger Lane and its environs was stark. The many golf courses in the area have kept this area of the Wirral severely moneyed.

Its location has also helped. I finally reached West Kirby town centre, and I decided to take in the beach before I got the train home. It was a bit windswept, and though it was warm, it wasn't actually sunny (though in true British style, there were a number of daytrippers out in shorts determined to make the most of the day whatever the weather), but it was beautiful.

A stirring sky above the Dee estuary, and those are the mountains of Wales in the distance. When you say "Liverpool", or "Merseyside", to people, all they think about is crime, or poverty, or industrial ugliness. They don't realise how scenic it is, how it has all this natural beauty to too, and how lucky people who live here really are. Even the beaches are wide, and clean, and sandy, and rarely crowded. I love it here.

Finally I tore myself away from the salty tasting air and wandered back to the station. As you may be able to spot from the photo, the station's fallen on hard times now. It was built as a terminus, and designed as such, but times change, and now the shop units that once lined the entrance are sadly empty. West Kirby station was once even bigger, with a second station next door for a line to Hooton, but that fell prey to Dr Beeching and now there's a leisure centre built on it. But West Kirby does have a little ALF, and bless it for that.

I sat on the platform, tired from my wanderings, but actually pretty happy. I've crossed off an entire branch now! The state of play map is looking pretty good after only a month or so (see below) - in fact, I'm a bit worried I may finish too soon. I'm enjoying this, and I don't want it to finish too quickly. Perhaps I should reconsider my decision not to do the City Lines...